Software developer job postings have picked up since the introduction of Claude Code in early 2025, according to an analysis from the Indeed Hiring Lab.
While the nearly 15% increase in software developer listings in the US since last February can't be entirely explained by Claude Code, its release, combined with other agentic AI tools coming out "at roughly the same time as software roles started to bounce back is a coincidence that cannot be ignored," Indeed Hiring Lab economist Guillermo Gallacher wrote. Importantly, software developer jobs have regularly been described as those most likely to be hit hard by AI.
The share of software development job postings also ticked up in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, Gallacher wrote. Meanwhile, overall US job postings fell 7% in the same period.
"The relationship between AI exposure and job postings appears to be flipping, from job destruction to job creation," Gallacher wrote.
US business leaders are singing a similar tune, despite earlier warnings from some tech executives that AI would upend the job market and cause widespread job losses. Jeff Bezos recently told the Financial Times that people who professed that many jobs would disappear "are just wrong." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who once predicted that "entire classes of jobs will go away and not come back" thanks to AI, said this year that he's no longer predicting a labor apocalypse.
A few caveats from Indeed's data: Many of the software developer roles posted in the past year are for senior positions, underscoring young tech workers' vulnerability in a market steered by AI. Overall, software developer job listings are still about 27.5% below their pre-pandemic level. And overall since 2022, jobs with greater AI exposure have experienced greater declines in postings, though the trend predates the introduction of ChatGPT.
But that's beginning to change.
"When analyzing the more recent period in which software development job postings have rebounded, the relationship and story flip: the more exposed to AI an occupation is, on average, the more it rebounded," Gallacher wrote. "This is true not just for software development, but also other AI-exposed occupations."
Emma Ockerman* is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.*
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